


Keep What You Kill

by winter_rogue



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_rogue/pseuds/winter_rogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a whole other ballgame when you’re the one holding the smoking gun and the bloody knife and you can’t get the coppery hot smell off your skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep What You Kill

**Author's Note:**

> angst_bingo fill for "stranded"
> 
> ambiguous references to prior violence

The thing was-- 

So it had been almost three years since Scott got bit. Since the whole world turned upside down and shook them around and spat them back out in the ever evolving mouth of hell. They survived _high school_ which is no mean feat under ordinary circumstances. 

It hadn’t been easy or pretty. Stiles admitted a long time ago-- to himself, to his school guidance counselor, hell, even once to his day and hadn’t that just been a real fucking low point in this whole sordid history-- that he couldn’t help living in constant fear. _Hypervigilance_. Worrying all of the time about Scott and himself and whether he was going to live long enough to see senior year. Worrying later on about the Pack and if _they_ would get to see senior year.

Bad things happened. He might have even learned to, if not live with them, at least deal with them. Endure them.

He’d fought alongside werewolves for so long he forgot he’d never really killed anyone, personally. Not even Peter, the first time.

It’s a whole other ballgame when you’re the one holding the smoking gun and the bloody knife and you can’t get the coppery hot smell off your skin. And all you can manage to feel is so goddamned relieved it isn’t one of your friends (family) lying dead in a puddle on the forest floor.

Stiles always thought to himself, always said, he was willing to do anything to keep Scott safe. For a long time that’s meant lying and breaking the law and being kidnapped and almost drowning and living his life terrified of his own shadow. Now it means killing. He’s killed for-- not just for Scott, for all of them. For the-- for his--

“Shit.”

Being able to admit something like that about yourself and being able to see it in the faces of your friends later, in the light of day, these aren’t the same things. So he ran away okay, he got into the Jeep with half a tank of gas, pointed himself in a direction _away_ and went. Because knowing something about yourself and _knowing_ the depths to which you are willing to dive, these are not the same things.

He made it all the way to the ocean before his wheels sputtered and died. It was as good as any place to pull over, Stiles thoughts.

If it means he’s stuck here and can’t go back, maybe that as good a plan as any too.

There’s still blood on his shirt. It’s Hunter blood. From the men and women who came into his-- their-- the Pack’s territory with violence in their hearts and loaded in the wolfbane bullets of their guns.

Stiles leaves his ruined hoody in the jeep, doors unlocked and the keys still in the dead ignition, and wanders out into the low, pale dunes. He can smell salt and copper. He wanders for a while, then sits, leeward to the ferocious wind. His knees tucked up close to his chest, he wraps his arms around them, hands clasped to hide the trembling and he watches the tide roll slowly out in the gathering dusk.

He doesn’t think about what he did and what he’s prepared to do. That’s done, that’s set in stone. 

The sink’s slowly here, like it’s the very edge of the world.

He doesn’t hear Derek’s approach until he sits down next to him in the sand, almost on top of him so that their hips and thighs and arms rub together. Derek is all wolf heat, it makes Stiles shiver.

“The Jeep ran out of gas,” he tells Derek eventually, inanely, when the silence has stretched between them longer than he can stand.

Derek makes a low _hmmming_ noise in reply.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” If he had wanted to talk he would have stayed in Beacon Hills. He wouldn’t have driven three quarters of the way across the state, obviously. And who was Derek to try to make him say anything about anything, anyways? King of Tight Lips everywhere. Emperor of Emotional Scars, etc. “Honestly, for once in my life I really don’t want to talk about it. I don’t regret it. I would do it again, obviously. I would do--”

“Stiles,” Derek interrupts him, low and a little gruff. He turns his head, warm puffs of air across Stiles neck. Derek noses softly at his chilled skin, plants a soft kiss against the sharp point where his clavicle meets his shoulder and wraps a heavy arm around his lower back, pulling them infinitely closer.

Stiles bites his lips closed.

“We would all kill to keep what belongs to us.”

The words make him jerk; just for a minute he tries to pull out of the werewolf’s grip but Derek doesn't let him go, just holds on tighter until he stops.

“Now, if it’s all the same, I’d like to take you home.”

END


End file.
